Musings on seeing God's loving sovereign hand in all of my life as wife, mom, grandmother, sister and friend. Thoughts on finding joy in God and beauty in all aspects of my life including MCS, gardening, homemaking, chronic illness and numerous food allergies.

Friday, February 28, 2014

Weather Challenges and Confirmations

We are traveling up to North Idaho to visit my Hubby's mother who is nearing the end of her life. We have been on the road for two days and have had to cut our trip short and hole up in a hotel in Missoula, Montana while a winter storm gets the snow and 50 mile per hour winds out of its system. This storm that hit this evening was predicted to hit late tomorrow night when we checked weather reports in Salt Lake this morning while deciding whether to take I-90 or I-84 route.

We had bare and dry pavement from Phoenix until Deer Lodge, MT and began getting into a snowstorm and some packed snow on the interstate. We pulled into Missoula knowing we needed to do something to improve our traction before proceeding on further. Since we have fairly new all weather snow and mud tires we had them siped at a tire dealership. God cared for us in this by the manager until less than 2 weeks ago was my brother's brother-in-law. My brother made a phone call and we got things at employee discount, got us in immediately and help trying to find tire chains/cables the size our car needs. So far none have been located.

The hour our car was on the rack having all four tires siped, we spent walking in the snowstorm in the trucker end of Missoula since my chemical sensitivities make me unable to tolerate sitting in the waiting area of a tire shop. We got to giggling thinking how God is breaking us into winter weather in preperations for our Colorado move. Yesterday we were in 78 degrees and today walking for almost an hour in 23 degrees snowstorm! While visiting as we walked, we were both struck on what a remarkable difference there is in me physically in a day and a half of being away from Arizona. My swelling is lower than it has been since summer and I feel better and more clear headed and energetic than I have for months! If we had any doubts (which we weren't having as we have seen God's hand be so evident in all of this!) about the rightness of our decision to relocate this is in itself a great confirmation! Oh and being able to be outside and feeling good is wonderful!! We are even more hopeful for our Colorado relocation.

After our tires were ready, we decided to try to proceed on as planned and got back onto Interstate 90 and began heading west. We were unsure and said we would see how it was and if bad turn around at Frenchtown a few miles west. Immediately we began noticing numerous cars that had just slid off the road into ditches in the increasingly slick road conditions and after a few miles we did turn around and returned to Missoula. We found a hotel and let our families know the changes in plans. Again we laughed thinking about the re-entry to winter living after our five and a half years in the Valley of the Sun. We are hearing the storm will last most the night and will likely be later in the day if at all before the passes will be good for travel. We are praying and would covet your prayers for a break in the weather and for the roads to be quickly cleared so we can get to North Idaho as soon as we can to have the bittersweet time to say our goodbyes to his Mom